Question

The American physical chemist Gilbert Newton Lewis (1875-1946) proposed a unit of time called a jiffy. According to Lewis, 1 jiffy is the time it takes light to travel 1 cm. (c= 2.998 x 10^8 m/s)

a) If you perform a task in a jiffy, how long does it take in seconds?



b) How many jiffys are in one minute?

Answer 1

a) 0.0166 s

b) 3600 jiffys

Step-by-step explanation:

a) A jiffy is equivalent to a 60th of second:

`1 jiffy=(1)/(60 s)=0.016666 s`

Hence, if a task is performed in
`1 jiffy` this is equivalent to
`0.016666 s`

b) Now, if a minute is equal to 60 seconds, we can make the transformation to jiffys:

`1 min (60 s)/(1 min) (1 jiffy)/(0.016666 s)=3600.144 jiffys \approx 3600 jiffys`